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Another high tech success story for New Bedford
It’s high tech…and it’s New Bedford
By Jack Spillane, Standard-Times writer
 New
Bedford. They don’t do high tech there, it’s a fishing
town. And a murder capital. You know. The Foxy Lady,
Puzzles Lounge, that kid of stuff.
That may be the view of this great city in the green
rooms of Boston’s “all crime, all the time” TV stations,
but it’s not the view at the Alverox Products plant in
the New Bedford Business Park.
That’s where 180 or so local folks work making some of
the most high-tech medical devices and “high
reliability” aerospace equipment assembled anywhere in
the world.
Alberox, a division of Morgan Advanced Ceramics, has
been constructing complex ceramic and metal complex
ceramic and metal components in New Bedford for more
than 45 years. It’s a clean, well-run plant that general
manager Brian Roznoy is justly proud of.
He makes a point of letting you know that the company
has two of the important ISO (International Standards
Organizational) certifications and a third on the way.
“The markets we’re servicing in medical and aerospace
are willing to pay for our value. Because we’re giving
them a very high reliability product,” he said.
“Reliability” is techno-talk for a product that can
withstand extremes of heat, cold and pressure – the type
of stuff you need in a jet craft or one of the CT
scanners that doctors use to get a good view of your
insides.
Roughly 70 percent of the workers at Morgan are women
who perform highly detailed assembly and quality-control
tasks – think of a fine jeweler, but one who is making
products that could save your life or send you to the
moon.
Mr. Roznoy said his company – which has nearly doubled
in size since 1996 – has had no problem in recent years
getting the quality workforce it needs in New Bedford.
Historically, it had recruited professionals from
Greater Boston and the West Coast, but because the
SouthCoast’s seaports and ocean inlets are not widely
known (like a Cape Cod), the company had occasionally
been frustrated looking for talent. So in recent years,
Morgan turned to the local state school and was
pleasantly surprised.
“We have had a phenomenal success working with UMass
Dartmouth, hiring mechanical engineers from their
program,” Mr. Roznoy said.
If a prospective employee actually knows the
southernmost part of Massachusetts, it’s not a hard sell
at all, said the New Jersey transplant.
“When they come here and see the area, they kind of fall
in love. It’s one of the better kept secrets,” he said.
The working-class folks of the industrial-era cities of
New Bedford and Fall River have long been a plus,
according to Mr. Roznoy, with many Alberox families
sending their second-and third-generation members to
labor in the plant.
It’s an extremely dedicated workforce,” he said, adding
that the company is running a very successful ESL
program.
Most of our employees are cross-trained, which means
they have the capability to do multiple jobs. It makes
it more interesting for them, it makes them more
valuable for us,” he said.
Statewide headlines told us last week that Massachusetts
secondary cities – the old working-class towns of New
Bedford, Brockton, Lawrence – are falling behind. The
places where immigrants crowd the tenements, and where
the underclass struggles to get by, have not shared in
the Greater Boston high-tech boom over the last 30
years. MassINC’s development planners are puzzled about
why, but are “very determined” to figure it out. Very,
very smart people with the Brookings Institution – a
big, important Washington think tank – say the answer
may be to attract a better-educated workforce to Greater
New Bedford. (Fewer than 10 percent of area adults hold
bachelor’s degrees.)
Fair enough.
But in time, affluent folks are going to find their way
to SouthCoast on their own as its comparatively
low-priced real estate and impressive oceanscapes become
more widely known.
But not every part of Massachusetts – or any state, for
that matter – is ever going to be an affluent suburb.
And there ought to be more places like the Alberox
Products plant where regular folks “work in a good job
for a good wage,” as the cliché goes.Contact:
jslillane@s-t.com
Date of publication: March 2, 2007 |
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